In praise of our community

Letter to the Editor,

Awake to the beauty of the countryside and to a sense of community in the natural world all about us as, in proper order, appear the purple violets, the wild blue phlox, the trilliums, the wild geranium, the refreshing shades of purple, lavender, and white blooms of the Dane’s rockets all along the roadsides, creek sides, spilling over into wooded areas, the soft shades of a jaded whiteness of the locusts now in full bloom throughout the woods all over the countryside, the phoebe, the clear call of the Bob white, the chipmunk awake from winter sleep. Yes, a steep sense of community.

Awake, too, to another sense of community that is here as we help one another. Recently, with the passing of my wife, our family experienced it firsthand — friends dropping what they were doing and giving of themselves to bring solace in a time of sorrow, sharing the grief. And a word fitly spoken, how good is it! The German would have it “Und ein Wort zu seiner Zeit ist sehr lieblich” (and a timely word, how lovely it is), Proverbs 15:23.

This sense of community abides in our songs and in our singing congregations. Just this past Sunday morning in our church, the beautiful singing of the words from this hymn dating back to the third century, “Shepherd of Tender Youth,” the third stanza:

Thou art the Great High Priest,

Thou hast prepared the feast

Of heavenly love:

While in our mortal pain,

None calls on Thee in vain:

Help Thou dost not disdain,

Help from above.

And our Amish brethren singing in thunderous song the strong, vibrant melodies of the Ausbund hymns from the 16th century in their early morning services. This singing of hymns runs as a thread of gold back through the centuries with Christians in song in the catacombs under the city of Rome, with songs echoing through the halls of the monastery of Mar Saba in the wilderness of Judea, and only in 1862 did John Mason Neale translate many of these Greek hymns that lie in the Greek service books over 1,100 years, among them “The Day of Resurrection.”

Earth, tell it out abroad;

The passover of gladness,

The passover of God.

From death to life eternal,

From this world to the sky,

Our Christ hath brought us over

With hymns of victory.

Thanks to the resurrection, die Auferstehung, of Christ and his death, it makes possible our living together in a sense of Christian community as we sing in word and live in life our songs of victory.

Paul A. Stutzman
Millersburg